Google Drive API release notes

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This page contains release notes for features and updates to the Drive API. We recommend that Drive API developers periodically check this list for any new announcements.

July 16, 2025

The Drive API has changed how download, print, and copy restrictions are applied.

Users with the role of owner or organizer can apply restrictions to other users with writer roles, in addition to reader roles. Users can directly apply restrictions on files using the itemDownloadRestriction field within the DownloadRestrictionsMetadata object. Determination of whether file restrictions can be changed is controlled by the new capabilities.canChangeItemDownloadRestriction field.

Similarly, users with the role of shared drive organizer can directly apply restrictions on shared drives using the downloadRestriction field within the Restrictions object. Determination of whether shared drive restrictions can be changed is also controlled by the capabilities.canChangeDownloadRestriction field.

While the previous field (copyRequiresWriterPermission) that controlled download, print, and copy restrictions is still available, the functionality is different for both reading from and writing to the field. We recommend that you use the new DownloadRestriction object to enforce how users can download, print, and copy files.

For more information about how download, print, and copy restrictions are now applied for My Drive and shared drive files, see:

July 07, 2025

(Developer Preview): You can now subscribe to events in Google Drive. The following event types are supported:

  • A file is added to a folder or shared drive.
  • A file is moved to a folder or shared drive.
  • A file is edited or a new revision is uploaded.
  • A file is trashed or removed from the trash.
  • An access proposal is created or resolved on a file.

For details, see Subscribe to Google Drive events in the Google Workspace Events API documentation. For information on how to receive Google Drive events from Google Cloud Pub/Sub, see Work with events from Google Drive.

February 19, 2025

Generally Available: The Google Drive API now supports folders with limited access which allow you to restrict folders to specific users. Folders with limited access broadens the expansive access model from shared drives to My Drive.

To limit access to a folder, developers can set the boolean inheritedPermissionsDisabled field on the files resource to true. Developers can also opt in to expansive access API behavior in My Drive ahead of any future mandatory enforcement by setting the enforceExpansiveAccess request parameter to true on the permissions.delete() and permissions.update() methods.

To learn more, see Manage folders with limited and expansive access.

September 13, 2024

The Google Drive API returns a long-running operation (LRO) every time you call the files.download method to download blob file content or export Google Workspace document content either through the Drive API or its client libraries.

The files.download method returns an Operation resource to the client. You can use the Operation interface to asynchronously retrieve the status of the API method by polling the operation through the GetOperationRequest method.

The files.download method is the only way to download Google Vids files in MP4 format and is typically best suited to downloading most video files.

To learn more, see Manage long-running operations.

July 11, 2024

The Google Drive API now supports the drive.meet.readonly scope. This restricted scope lets you view Drive files created or edited by Google Meet.

For details, see Choose Google Drive API scopes.

January 26, 2024

You can now get a list of the user's installed apps in v3, with information about each app's supported MIME types, file extensions, and other details.

The apps resource represents a user's list of installed apps and it supports the following methods:

  • Get a specific installed app.

  • List all the installed apps.

January 24, 2024

Each user can have up to 500 million items that were created by that account, no matter where those items reside. Previously, users could create an unlimited number of items in Drive.

November 21, 2023

A user's My Drive can't contain more than 100 levels of nested folders. Previously, folders in My Drive could be at an unlimited depth.

July 24, 2023

A new content restriction parameter that only the file owner can modify (ownerRestricted) was added.

In addition, three capabilities were added:

  • capabilities.canModifyEditorContentRestriction
  • capabilities.canModifyOwnerContentRestriction
  • capabilities.canRemoveContentRestriction

For details, see Protect file content.

The capabilities.canModifyContentRestriction parameter was deprecated.

March 10, 2013

The Google Drive API is now generally available.